Native American Minnesota

Last Friday night, Waziyatawin Angela Wilson was a guest on Almanac, Twin Cities Public Television’s weekly public affairs program, with co-hosts Eric Eskola and Cathy Wurzer. The segment was the third in their series of Sesquicentennial Month discussions with Minnesota  historians.

 
The video can be viewed from the Almanac home page or their archives. The segment is about 5 minutes long.

And a tip-of-the-blogger hat to her for mentioning this blog as one of the places people can go to get information about our state’s sad history of treatment of its indigenous people.

On my way down to Winona last week for the Sesqui Capitol for a Day, I stopped by a roadside rest on Hwy 61 between Lake City and Wabasha to read the Minnesota Historical Society marker, erected in 1985, about Lake Pepin.

Nothing struck me at the time about the wording of the marker.  But on Friday during the truth and reconciliation talk circle, I heard a couple of stories of how Indian burial grounds, including the park land where the circle was taking place, were destroyed and/or raided by the settlers… and how to this day, people are still looting burial grounds and selling the items on eBay. (See this 2006 Arizona Republic article, Stolen artifacts shatter ancient culture.)

One of the handouts at the Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming table was a photocopy titled “Skulls of Chief Wabasha’s Children” and its text contains “Leaf No. 49 of Rev. Edward Ely’s Journal 1852-1853 — Extract from Winona Daily Republican June 29, 1867.”

It tells the story of how an “English gentleman and his wife… secured three genuine Indian skulls that belonged to the royal line of sovereigns that had governed this prairie for ages.”

When I got home, I re-read the text of the Lake Pepin historical marker (right photo above). It includes this:

Long before the European explorer Father Louis Hennepin “discovered” what he called the “Lake of Tears” in 1680, it served as a highway for Indian people of many cultures. Their burial mounds and earthworks can still be found along its shores.

That second sentence could easily be interpreted to mean that people today are still hunting for this stuff and finding it, as if that’s a fun hobby one should consider.  That’s surely not the intent of the marker but a follow-up sentence that said something to the effect that “these are sacred sites, no different than the cemeteries where your relatives are buried, and should not be disturbed” would be a way to educate the public about the issue. Again, it’s a missed opportunity. Changing or replacing that marker might be prohibitively expensive but adding a new one that’s dedicated to educating the public about Indian burial sites would seem doable.

 
At the Sesqui celebration at the Capitol last weekend, there were several tents for a variety of exhibitor displays. Among them was the Archives and Special Collections department of the University of Minnesota Libraries, displaying their Becoming Minnesota: A Sequicentennial Sampler exhibit.

 
One of table displays was called ‘Where We Began’ and it conveyed a very narrow and 100% positive version of the early history of the state. Click the photos to enlarge and you’ll see. Even more telling: The web page for the "Where We Began" portion of the exhibit contains the following narrative. (It uses scrolling Flash text but I’ve manually transcribed it.)

Encounter between the native peoples of this region and Europeans is where the story of our statehood begins. The European perspective on the nature of these encounters — captured in accounts written by Jesuit missionaries, explorers like Father Louis Hennepin, early settlers like Jonathan Carver, and illustrated in early printed maps — is what remains for us today of this early time, enriched by the memories and life experiences, captured nearly a century later, of such men as Chatonwahtooamany, chief of the kapoja band of Mdewakanton Sioux.

By the 19th century, encounter gave way to widespread settlement and industrialization. Cities like Duluth attracted businesses and immigrants; the expanding milling industry brought additional prosperity, so much so that Minneapolis could undertake such projects as the dredging of Lake of the Isles to expand its parkway system. Immigrants from Sweden and elsewhere throughout Europe, including the Isle of Man, flocked to Minnesota, changing the nature of our history of encounter. We acknowledge this rich heritage today in the names of our lakes and rivers, our counties, cities, and streets, our institutions, and our celebrations.

The text completely avoids any mention of horrible realities of Euro-American treatment of our state’s indigenous people. It uses phrases like "By the 19th century, encounter gave way to widespread settlement" when it should use phrases like "By the end of the 19th century, decades of broken treaties and policies of ethnic cleansing allowed for widespread settlement…"

I think that it’s seemingly innocuous exhibits like this that, when they’re part of a pattern, continue to contaminate the state’s relationship with its Native people.

It’s too late to do anything about this particular exhibit, as it ended in late March. But maybe something can be changed with the web version. And maybe the U of M Libraries would consider creating another exhibit, similar to the terrific one that the DNR has done at Fort Snelling State Park about the 1862-63 Dakota Concentration Camp that I blogged about a few weeks ago.

George Goggleye Jr., Tribal Chair of the Leech Lake Band Of Ojibwe, spoke briefly Sunday night on the steps of the State Capitol. He then introduced Leech Lake Nation, a drumming and singing group who performed ‘Honor Song.’

Click play to listen. 5 minutes. The music begins at the one-minute mark.

Or alternately, download the MP3.

 
Here’s the audio of Kevin Leecy’s Sesquicentennial speech Sunday night on the steps of the State Capitol. Kevin is Tribal Chair of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and Chair of the Board of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC).

Click play to listen. 4 minutes, 26 seconds.

Or alternately, download the MP3.

The group of Dakota people who marched and protested last weekend (see my blog post/photos) also staged a protest on Sunday evening during the Sesqui ceremonies.

Media coverage:

• Pioneer Press: Protest briefly disrupts sesquicentennial event; 3 Indian activists taken into custody
• WCCO-TV: Why Some Native Americans Are Upset With Minnesota

I got this email today from Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, pictured above on the right:

Hi Griff. If you are going to do this work for the Sesquicentennial so that they can say they are addressing Dakota or "Native American" issues, I hope you will include more critical voices.  Right now it seems as if the commission (through your work) is trying to appropriate our voices and to ameliorate the effects of our protest.

This statement from my father, Chris Mato Nunpa, in response to Jane Leonard’s speech on Sunday, must also be included in your blogsite.  He is absolutely right on and effectively addresses why Jane’s speech was so offensive to those Dakota people in attendance.  I am pasting it below.  Please post it.

Thank you.

Waziyatawin

I wrote her back and said I’d be happy to blog Chris’ critique here. I’ve included a photo of him that I took last week at Mounds Park.

Jane, I just heard a brief excerpt of a speech you gave at the State Capitol.  Again, you talk a good game.  You have fine rhetoric.    As long as you don’t talk about massive land theft, 24 million acres alone in the 1851 treaties signed at Traverse des Sioux and at Mendota,  as long as you don’t talk about the broken treaties with the Dakota, which were violated by the U.S. government and its U.S. Euro-Minnesotan citizenry;  and as long as you don’t talk about the genocide of the Dakota People of Minnesota, you are still presenting, literally, a white-washed history.

You are like the other colonizers/white supremacists (not meant to be mean-spirited but to convey a reality) who suppress the TRUTH and substitute myth for reality.  The wagon train at Ft. Snelling is an excellent example of replacing the TRUTH with myth.  The invaders/settlers came up the river by boat to steal land in Minnesota.    You, the Sesquicentennial Commision, the Minnesota Historical Society, etc. would rather create lies (the wagon train) and suppress the TRUTH (bounties, concentration camps,  mass executions, etc.) about what really happened in this state, especially in the past 150 years.

I did notict that you said "internment camp" instead of calling it what it really is - a CONCENTRATION CAMP.  This is the social practice of herding innocent civilians, non-combatants in one concentrated place, holding them there for protracted periods of time without charging them with any crime.  This is a Concentration Camp.   As Jack Weatherford writes in his book NATIVE ROOTS, as he studies a photograph of the concentration camp consisting of tipis, he said he was watching "the birth of an institution which was to haunt the 20th century."

You talk about "mistreatment" - how about "GENOCIDE"      Bounties, Concentration Camps, forced marches, forced removals/ethnic cleansing,  warfare,  all related to various criteria of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention such as:  #1  killing members of the group (viz., Dakota People).  Bounties, Warfare, would fit this;   #3  deliberately inflicting conditions upon a group calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part.  concentration camps,  forced marches,  forced removals/Ethnic Cleansing fulfill this criterion.   If you think you’re telling the TRUTH, then you need to begin using these terms.

Also, you talk about "Reconciliation," which, in my opinion, is a totally inappropriate term.  This implies that that once Dakota People and the wasicu were once one entity.  They were NOT!   The Wasicu (white man) always wanted land, he had no land.  The Dakota People had land.  Then, the White man stole the land, and now, the Dakota People are living in a state of oppression and exploitation in their own land.  What is more appropriate (than reconciliation) are terms such as TRUTH,  JUSTICE,  and  MUTUAL RESPECT.

TRUTH   acknowledging the bounties,   concentration camps, the stolen lands   the lands which have not been paid for    broken treaties     GENOCIDE    etc.  and then teaching this true history in the public schools and in the colleges and universities.

JUSTICE   land restitution, i.e., the return of state and federal lands, e.g. within the Treaty of 1805, the 155,000+ acres upon which the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis set;     land reparations - payment for the lands.  For example, the lands upon which St. Paul and Minneapolis set have not been paid for (the Treaty of 1805).   The 24 million acres involved in the Treaties of 1851 were grossly under-paid for.    and, finally,  reparations for GENOCIDE which the U.S. government, the State of Minnesota, and its Euro-Minnesotan citizenry perpetrated upon the Dakota People!

MUTUAL RESPECT     The white man, including the Euro-Minnesotans of yesterday and of today, have generally NOT respected for the past 500 years the languages, religions,  the world-views,  the perspectives,  the values,  the customs and traditions,  the cultures,  etc. of the Indigenous Peoples of the U.S., and of the Dakota People of Minnesota.  They have NOT respected the Indigenous Peoples as human beings, as PEOPLE.   Instead, the Euro-Minnesotan and the U.S. Euro-American have viewed the Indigenous Peoples and the Dakota People as sub-human,  as animals, wild animals, therefore, it’s OK to put bounties on them, and as uncivilized and SAVAGE!

These things the Euro-Minnesotan, the Sesquicentennial Commission, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the other colonial institutions of the U.S. and of Minnesota need to acknowledge and then to teach in the texts and schools and in the colleges and universities.

I have some time now - I am now retired.   I may have to attend some of the sessions where you, and representatives of the MHS, and of other racist, colonial institutions are talking and then add my two cents to the discussion.  You need to invite people like me,  Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa;   Waziyata Win (Dr. Angela Cavender Wilson);   Jim Anderson of the Mendota Dakota Community;   Ms. Gaby Tateyuskanskan of the Sisseton Wahpeton Reservation.  If you can’t tell the TRUTH, we can!!!!

Chris Mato Nunpa, Ph.D., Formerly Associate Professor of Indigenous Nations & Dakota Studies (INDS) at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, Minnesota

5690 250th Ave.
Granite Falls, Minnesota 56241

I hope to have some helpful and interesting online discussions here via the comment feature that’s enabled on most blog posts.

So I’ve added a page of Discussion Guidelines that I’ve developed over the years so that visitors here know what’s expected.

I’ve been moderating online forums/web message boards since 1986 and created several successful online communities. Currently, I co-host a blog and podcast in my hometown of Northfield called Locally Grown that has a dozen or more active comment threads at any given time. I’m the moderator there.

Let me know if you have questions about my Guidelines. Be forewarned, though — they’re a bit unusual!

Here’s the audio of Governor Tim Pawlenty’s Sesquicentennial speech last night on the steps of the State Capitol.

Click play to listen. 7 minutes.

Or alternately, download the MP3.

I took photos of some of yesterday’s Sesqui activities at the State Capitol.  I’ll blog those soon.

I also recorded the audio of portions of the speeches that were given from the platform.

Here’s an excerpt of Sesqui Executive Director Jane Leonard’s speech, where she addresses the dark side of Minnesota’s Statehood: the sad and painful legacy of the state’s treatment of its indigenous peoples.

Click play to listen. 4 minutes.

The more I learn about the history of Minnesota’s indigenous people, the more I start to see examples of things that still exist today that, deliberately or not, misrepresent that history. And among Native Americans, these things can easily be seen as a continuation of the denial or lack of truth-telling about their painful history with whites that’s occurred for decades.

On the bluffs above Winona is a panoramic lookout called Garvin Heights Park. I paid a visit on Thursday evening and took these photos of the educational markers and displays there.

Center: The text on the plaque about Garvin Heights begins:

The city 575 feet below this bluff was founded in 1851 by Captain Orrin Smith on the site of ‘KEOXAH’ the village of Sioux Indian Chief WAPASHA and his band. First called Wabasha’s Prairie, it was later named Winona - - from the Sioux word ‘Wenohan,’ meaning first-born daughter.

Right: The history panel on the three-sided display about the site begins with this text:

Winona has been home to many peoples ever since the the first Native American hunted mammoths and mastodons 12,000 years ago. The Dakota and Ho-Chunk lived here until the 1850s. The Dakota called it "Keoxa," or homeland. Their word "wenonah" means "first-born daughter."

Both texts then continue with economic and cultural narrative about the early Euro-American settlers in the area. There’s no mention of what happened to the Dakota people. One is left with the notion that they somehow became ‘extinct,’ rather than telling the truth of their forced removal to the Lower Sioux Agency in southwestern Minnesota after the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux and the Treaty of Mendota.

A ‘truth and reconciliation talk circle’ was held at the Jaycees Pavilion in Lake Park in Winona yesterday, part of the Sesqui Capitol for a Day activities.

It was organized by the Winona-Dakota Unity Alliance, the City of Winona, and the Diversity Foundation, the same partnership that puts on the Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming every year in Winona.

Participants shared personal pain and anger, told family stories (sad and funny), chronicled their path to greater understanding, gave mini-lectures to educate the audience, expressed appreciation for progress, and raised issues that still need addressing.

See the album of 23 photos or this slideshow:

After the sunrise ceremony, I went to Winona City Hall for the Sesqui Capital for a Day ceremonies, including a speech by Governor Tim Pawlenty. In his remarks, Pawlenty acknowledged that Native Americans paid a steep and painful price for Minnesota’s statehood. (I didn’t record his speech and I don’t remember the exact wording but I’ll see if I can get the text of his remarks from the Sesqui office.)

After his speech, Pawlenty shook hands with each member of the various veterans groups that were flanking the podium, including members of the Andrew Blackhawk American Legion Post from Black River Falls, Wisconsin.

A group of about 50 local citizens and Sesqui visitors gathered at the Jaycees Pavilion in Lake Park in Winona early this morning for a Native American sunrise ceremony.

As we gathered in a large circle, one elder sang a song and then another, holding a plate of burning tobacco called a smudge pot, went from person to person so that we could each use our hands to prayerfully ‘bathe’ our hearts and heads in tobacco smoke. A third elder stood in the center of the circle and said prayers to the four directions (north, east, west and south). See this page for more on the practice of ceremonial smudging.

Then an elder went around the circle for each of us to briefly smoke a peace pipe. (Background on that practice here.)

At the end, everyone went around the circle in a line to greet and shake the hands of everyone else in the circle.

We were asked to not take video or photos till the handshaking at the end.

I drove down to Winona this afternoon. Tomorrow, the city is the 5th and final Capitol for a Day city and there’s a Native American sunrise ceremony at Lake Park that I want to attend, followed by a Truth and Reconciliation Circle.

I was forwarded an email to the Sesquicentennial people by book author Marybeth Lorbiecki about the Dakota communities who were exiled from the state after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. She wrote:

I would like to suggest that it would be an important part of the history, healing, and celebration of the state to invite the exiled communities home and to create a map of the exiled Minnesotan Dakota communities for exhibit and distribution– and set up a kind of virtual community base of email and web site connections for these exiled people to connect, communicate, and be brought back into the circle of our community.

I wrote a biography (as yet unpublished) on one of our incredible Minnesotans — Ohiyesa: Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman — and as part of the project, I tried to track down the exiled communities (or as many as I could), and I wrote a sidebar on them. (I apologize if I have missed some communities). Perhaps it could serve as the basis for a map and contacting the communities — there could be an intriguing book in this as well for a Dakota scholar!! Where Are They Now?

So I offer this research to you as a springboard for bringing these people home — for  apologies, reconciliation, reconnection, and honoring, as we remember, consider, regret, and celebrate various aspects our state’s complex and often painful history and legacy.

I like the idea. I’ll be in Winona this Friday, May 16, for the Sesquicentennial’s Capitals for a Day program . According to Exec Director Jane Leonard, the City of Winona and the Winona Dakota Unity Alliance (the organization that hosts the annual Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming every June) will be hosting a healing and reconciliation circle and inviting back exiled Dakota tribes, as well as Ojibwe and Ho-Chunk.

Here’s the text of Marybeth Lorbiecki’s sidebar from her forthcoming book on Ohiyesa. (In the meantime, see the Wikipedia entry on Ohiyesa/Charles Eastman.)

The Dakota Diaspora

In 1863, Congress passed the Act of Forfeiture, revoking all treaties with the Dakota, including their reservation lands and payment rights. The state confiscated all their lands and exiled them permanently, leaving only a small group of "friendlies" living on Sibley’s land in Mendota.

By 1893, Congress recognized that the earlier act of forfeiture did not fully address the complexities of the conflict, that there had been many who had not engaged in an act of war against the state and national government. Public pressure arose from Indian rights associations that it was not legal or ethical to simply nullify treaties, since the causes of the conflict had been the Congress’s lack of fulfilling the treaty stipulations in the first place.

In keeping with the Dawes Act, loyal Dakota were given 80 acres each in three areas in the state: Prairie Island, Shakopee/Prior Lake, and around Morton, where Eastman had been born on the former Lower Sioux Reservation. Many Isanti (Santee Sioux) Dakota also settled around Granite Falls on the former Upper Sioux Reservation or around Lake Tewaukon /near Sisseton and Lake Traverse in South Dakota.

Eventually each of these coalesced into recognized tribal communities. But numerous Dakota never made it back to their homelands. Many remained on the Santee Reservation in Niobrara, Nebraska, or in Flandreau, South Dakota. Others were scattered in northern exile, ending up in Fort Totten/Spirit Lake (Devil’s Lake) in North Dakota; at Fort Peck with Assiniboine bands in northeastern Montana, and in Saskatchewan at the Standing Buffalo Reserve near Fort Qu’Appelle; White Cap/Moose Woods Reserve, just south of Saskatoon; Round Plains Wahpeton Reserve near Prince Albert; and in Manitoba at the Sioux Valley Reserve just west of Brandon; the Birdtail Reserve north of Virden; Oak Lake Reserve south of Virden, and the Dakota Plains and Dakota Tipi Reserves near Portage La Prairie.

Many tipospaye and village bands were separated, with links to each other lost in the scattering. Yet, even under the threat of death and imprisonment, many returned to their lands, continued their traditions, spoke in their language, and continued to try to rebuild the sacred hoop of the Dakota and the Oceti Sakowin. These efforts go on today.

I’ve enabled comments on this blog post so that anyone can contribute to the discussion on how to make this happen.